Foursquare vs. Shopkick

By Nikki Baird, Managing Partner, RSR, Retail Systems Research


I like my phone. A lot. Okay, admittedly I am an Apple fan, not quite the level of my husband, but Antenna-Gate was not a big deal for me, and I do very much love my new iPhone 4. However, that does not mean I am maxing out my use of the device.

I occasionally remember to price-compare. I sometimes remember to use my Flixter app to find a movie show time rather than just Google it. I definitely love my new favorite app, Keyring, which lets me enter all of my barcode-based loyalty cards into a virtual wallet, and pull them up and scan them at the register straight from my phone.

But what about all the hype around the two "kings of location" that are often spoken in the same breath... foursquare and Shopkick? Here's why I think in the game of retail, apps like shopkick will win - but the business model is by no means refined quite yet.

Read the rest of the post here, at the RSR website.